The Girl From Brooklyn
by lunarock9
Summary: Stephanie Rogers, through the years. From Captain America: The First Avenger to The Avengers. Fem!Steve Not explicitly stony, can be read as such.


Stephanie "Annie" Rogers was born on July 4, 1920, the year women won the right to vote in America. It was fitting, for what she'd become later.

She'd grown up in a poor family, with a sense of right and wrong that had yet to be challenged as she battled her way through the street boys, who weren't afraid to hit a girl. She fought through asthma attacks, the shudders and rasp of her seeming imagination, struggling to strengthen twig-like arms, stumbling-stick legs. She'd spent her whole life fighting obstacles.

(Though most of her survival could be attributed to Bucky, who had always been there, punching them down before they got too far. He'd never let her go down.)

Naturally, she'd idolized Amelia Earheart. A woman- flying planes across the Atlantic! Eight year old Annie could not even begin to imagine what it was to fly across that expanse- or to be the first one to do so. She wanted to be that- out where she could save lives and help people, she decided, after watching the aged man she called 'Poppa' succumb to mustard gas from within the safety of her Momma's arms. Joseph Rogers had fought too, and bravely, but he could only fight for so long, her mother had told her, standing in front of a grave, the week after February 16, 1925. People had given their lives for her during the Great War. Why should Annie do anything less?

(Bucky humored her, but had always tried to suggest that maybe she would be better off elsewhere- nurses were in high demand now.)

That's what had always sparked their arguments. Because Bucky (Bucky- who couldn't bear to let the scrawny little girl he'd fought tooth and nail to keep safe, the same orphan he'd comforted in the late hours of a nightmare, the brave, strong-willed avenging angel who refused to be a bystander while others were hurt, he just couldn't let his Annie go) said it'd be safer, and she said she wanted to be out there, tried to explain it wasn't for her it was for them. He would argue she'd do more harm than good by getting herself killed, but by then the fire would have drained out of her and she would realize he was right. Most of the time. The other times she'd bite back bitterly, releasing retorts like knives and he'd deflect because that was what they did- except when he didn't, because he didn't want to hurt her, he wanted her safe and if that meant letting one fight go, then he did it. Over the years, these fights became less and less frequent. It didn't matter how their fights ended, because it was always the same. Because Bucky could never say no for long to Annie, but sometimes she saw he was trying to help and let it go. Because they'd end it through an awkward hug, made difficult by the distinct height difference, and she'd mumble into his shoulder "Jerk," and he'd mutter back "Punk." And then it would be over.

Sarah Rogers died August 23, 1928. TB was not uncommon, but Annie saw the bitter irony- a nurse dies from her patient's disease.

Annie went into training, to be a nurse, at Bucky's suggestion. (The memory of her Momma was sharp against her already bloody heart, but dulled through the busyness provided by medical formality.) Resigning herself to remaining on the sidelines, she lived in the small apartment she and Bucky worked to pay for, pooling their income, struggling, but making ends meet. Conditions that had forced them to accept those quarters were forgotten (But the nightmares were not.). Bucky signed up for military service at the age of twenty-two. She waited at home for him to come home, welcoming her best friend home with a tired smile and a warm plate. They pretended not to see the glances at her hand for a sign of engagement, nor the disapproving stares. They knew it was improper for her, a young dame, to live with him, without the justification of marriage. They would wait.

(Although, when Bucky had asked, uncertain and worried, she had turned him down gently. He'd looked relieved, and she figured, if nothing else, they'd marry when they were just a little older.)

Then Pearl Harbor happened.

And then Bucky went to war.

It was no different than any of the other times he was away, on duty. But it seemed so, with the abundance of posters, and the constant talk of soldiers.

Everyone knew someone who'd gone.

Suddenly she was even more anxious to join the war effort. Bucky made her promise in writing that she wouldn't join. How could she deny him?

(He'd taken care of Annie her entire life, the least she could do was honor his wish that she remain safe.)

She finished her training earlier than anyone had expected, and, with nobody to wait for at home, found every enlistment poster she saw harder to turn away from.

How could she let the Nazi oppression continue?

The chance of a lifetime wound itself into her work, through the treatment and medical care of a scientist who'd suffered severe head injuries after an attack (she'd later learn) I by the terrorist organization called HYDRA, Dr. Erskine.

The injured doctor required a lab assistant after the events that had befallen him before his hospital trip. Annie, plagued with guilt, volunteered immediately once she heard how it would help with the war effort. The education she received while training to become a nurse aided her as his assistant due to her extended knowledge of anatomy which was helpful in his quest to perfect the super soldier serum. The revelations that the serum would be used to help Bucky's regiment convinced her she what she had already been so sure of- she needed to help with it.

For months they worked together to complete the serum. Erskine told her of his studies, and the nature of the procedure involved, she listened as he explained his greatest failure in Schmidt. She assisted in the final form of the serum and was told by Erskine of the requirements for one to truly become a super soldier. Annie marveled, and worried, for as much as she enjoyed Erskine's company, which grew more fatherly each day, she waited for the day he'd leave for Italy, because then she'd be made to find a new job, and once again be useless to the war.

Howard Stark visited three weeks before the serum was finished.

The odd fusion of sarcastic wit and charm that was Howard Stark's genius was, quite frankly disturbing and what Annie would consider an inhibition of her work.

(He was most certainly not distracting her. She would never be caught up in someone like Stark. Ever.)

He stayed for little more than a day, just checking to ensure that the procedure would be compatible with his tech, and that the funding would be enough.

He left, leaving the machine behind to be adjusted as necessary to the chosen soldier. It was as the cocky engineer left that Erskine told her.

"He is not easy to get along with, Stephanie. But deep down he does strive for the better. Less so than yourself, however. It is a shame they would not accept you as a candidate for the serum."

This is why, a week later, with an attack on their lab in progress he ushered her into the steel container.

"But-"

"There is no time, Stephanie! You must do this, and protect the secrets of the serum," he insisted.

"Abraham, I've been sick my whole life. The serum would be wasted on me."

"Stephanie, you do not understand. I prefer you over the others who would have. You have a good heart. The strong man who has known power all his life, may lose respect for that power, but a weak man knows the value of strength, and knows... compassion. You must do this now or my work will be wasted in fools."

Dumbstruck, she allowed herself to be pushed back into the machine. Several injections took place, but she barely noticed.

The doctor prepared to close the doors of the chamber.

"Stephanie. Whatever happens from here on, you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are, not a perfect soldier, but a good woman." Nodding, he closed the doors and started up the machine. Despite the lack of power, the facility could provide enough to at least prevent their attackers from getting into Annie's chamber.

With his tasks nearly complete, he took the last vial of the blue serum and smashed it. Men burst through the lab doors, bellowing angrily at the destruction of their target.

(She sobbed silently from inside the contraption at the sound of gunshots, and the muffled thump that followed.)

Through a process that was as painful as it was rewarding she was transformed into a super soldier, the pinnacle of human perfection.

(It was meaningless, compared to the death of her surrogate father.)

Annie, now strengthened by the serum's enhancements and empowered by the wave of anger coursing through her, leapt from the machine, and in a deadly flurry of movement, swiftly did away with the murderers.

She turned to the grey haired man on the floor, swallowing her tears, and headed for the nearest police station.

(It wasn't worth it.)

Annie wasn't sure what exactly happened next, but somehow she ended up in a lab. Pokes and prods and jabs with needles were just the start. She underwent numerous tests, under the cold eye of numerous scientists. Senator Brandy had spoken of a chorus girl she was all too unwilling to become, but in order to appease him, she allowed for the occasional posing as her likeness was captured and made into a poster. She barely recognized the blonde woman in the flyers- who went by several titles, the phrase 'Star Spangled' preceding each of them. Star Spangled Gal Who's Your Pal, Ann with a Plan, and Girl to Save the World was plastered across various "You can do it!" posters.

Forbidden from the battlefield, and unwilling to dance on stage, this was all she is left with.

This and Bucky.

So she waited for word and did prodding of her own for answers but Annie received nothing from the paste-white lab coats beyond that she was not of a high enough security clearance to know such information.

Then she met Howard Stark again. He took pity on her, and stayed for the first half of the testing process, after which she got a week's break before she must return.

"You were made for more than this, you know," he told her, after a brief glance at a caricature of Pincushion Rogers.

(She knew, and she wanted to serve her country, but her only option was to become the lab rat of the SSR, so that other men could become like her, and fight.)

Annie told him of a small part of this, to which he frowned.

"They've already drawn blood and you'll complete the basic tests by the end of this week. There's no reason to make you stay here."

She nodded halfheartedly.

"You'll need to convince the scientists first. They told me I have to stay for the next set of tests, for things like disease and injuries. I'm not allowed to leave."

Through some miracle, the scientists agreed that there was no real need for her, under the condition that she stay half a week more to complete some condensed test.

She flew with Howard across the world, and just as they arrived she heard the news about Bucky. It was then she decided. A glorified pincushion she'd no longer be, and, bearing the shield she'd once posed with in the motivational photos, Annie raided an enemy base. (Howard flew her in, eyes dark with worry, though he knew he could not stop her.) When she trudged back to base with a parade of grimy ex-POWs, she was greeted with a stunned silence. Then Bucky, braving the condemnation of his comrades, cheered for their 'Captain America,' and the camp was alight with the cheers of the regiment.

The war blurred by, a never-ending stream of attack and strategy and sometimes it was all just too much and she wondered why she ever thought she could handle this. But then she'd hear something odd in the voices of her men, something that made the little thing in her chest warm, and she was saving lives and stopping oppression and it was worth it.

But then, then there's a mission with a train and mountains and loss and Bucky and she can't breathe right any more, and her men can see it in her eyes, and she almost loses it but she pulls it together, capturing Zola and saving her collapse for when she's safe on the inside of Howard's workshop and nobody can see.

It's not enough, and although Annie pulls enough of herself together to move on, she's broken enough that when she's at the controls of the Valkyrie, loaded with enough bombs to blow the USA apart, she nosedives into the ice, and sits where the water will pour into the plane, hoping for a quick death. (it's too late too hope for a painless death. Life was the most painful way you could die, she'd learned.)

It's not quick, not at all.

Stephanie Rogers wakes up in a hospital room full of lies, and they tell her she's been asleep. For almost seventy years.

Everyone she loves is dead.

They ask her to join a team.

She can't refuse.

...

The parallels in Steph's life are getting just a little tedious.

Especially since everyone even looks like their 1940's counterpart.

Now, this is not a neoteric realization, as Steph had considered this when the team had first formed, the threat of Loki's forces a looming obstacle yet. It just so happens to be that today it irritates her more than normal. That was all. Really. In fact, it is completely extraneous to Her Occurrence today, which had consisted of various distressing hallucinations which involved her teammates. And so maybe she cried a little, but it was obviously the effect of the gas.

(They had told her she hadn't stopped crying over Buc-Clint for half an hour.)

The point is, it is both completely disturbing and depressingly irksome that her lives (it's tragic, that's what it is, that she thinks about them as separate, but justified- there is a distinct difference between before and after.) are filled with people who are clones of people who are dead.

The worst part is, she almost finds herself slipping into the easy companionship of before.

She can't admit, even to herself, the pain she feels every time she must remind herself no, Tony is not Howard, and once she adjusts and reacquaints herself with the according mechanic, all is well (Except it isn't, because Tony and Howard are two very different people whom she treated very differently, respectively. Even worse is when Tony can tell when she's switched from talking to Howard or himself. She will never understand the worst of it, though. What hurts Tony is the flicker of pain behind honey lashes, an immutable reminder of how he can never be Howard Stark, and with this simple notion, he's failed her already.)

Guilt harasses her after these phases. Steph betrays her team, to that of another generation. Her heart hurts, because these people deserve a better, newer, more modern her, who judges them for more than the ghosts of her past. She knows this. They deserve better, they do. Yet Steph can't ever bring herself to let go.

That's why, three months after Loki's attack on New York, she feels as if a sinner, sitting on the floor of Tony's workshop with tears in her shirt, and a face tucked into her shoulder. Her iniquity resides in the traitorous thought niggling in the dark recesses of an oubliette, the trapdoor under which is stowed another lifetime, along with everything else she's had to suppress, in addition to her turbulent memories. The evidence of treason?

 _Howard would not have done this._

Remorse ensconces Steph's conscience, swallowing her whole-

-Until she realizes.

The thought had not been bitter. Or angry, vengeful or negative in general. There was a faint tug at her heart, but it had floated on.

Because Steph knows Tony. And she knew he was not his father.

And she realizes- with a jolt- that she absolutely loves him all the more for it.

An urge to cry overwhelms her because she's finally found a foothold in this world teeming with strife, but it's one she can and will so easily lose.

...

Sometimes, Steph wondered if they knew.

'They' being her new team, of course.

She wondered, if they had ever known or even wondered(though she sincerely doubts they care) about who she had been.

Before the serum.

If they did, she was severely disappointed.

Because of all the things to call her, Tony Stark should not have called her /dumb./

Because Steph was a scientist before the serum, and she's sick of being undermined by 'superior intelligence.'

Because she'd fought so hard to keep up with the modern world.

This in mind, she felt perfectly justified in her reaction. (Maybe she was overreacting a little, she hadn't meant to slap him that hard.)

Her resolve hardens, though, when she remembers the barrage of insults she'd suffered. She'd done it and he'd deserved it. Story over.

Her attitude toward him is a shield. Melted by the heat of his words, molded by the constant hammering of his spite pounding in her head, cooled by the grief of-

No. She won't think of it.

Especially not now that he's at her door, asking- begging for her. She raises the metaphorical shield, as if Tony's words are enemy fire.

Not once does he apologize.

Not once have the words "I'm sorry" crossed his lips.

Not once has he admitted what he did was wrong.

Not once.

Until-

"Stephanie, I know you're in there."

He rarely uses her full name, but Steph is not going to give him the satisfaction of her answer. The next muffled phrase gives the blonde the impression that he might have leaned his head against the door.

"I know I screwed up. I shouldn't have called you that and I know you're smarter than I ever give you credit for. Hell, you're just plain better than I've ever given you credit for. I'm sorry."

There is a pause, leaden with the deadweight of hesitation.

"Okay."

Another pause, relieved.

"I'm sorry I slapped you."

The tension fizzles away as laughter bubbles up.

"Oh, believe me, I'm used to it. Between Pepper, Natasha and now Maria, I've had more than my fair share of head-related injuries. Now, what do you say we rejoin the others for brunch?"

She steps out with him, armed with a smile, and they proceed to the kitchen.

This is the tramedy that is the Avenger's morning. It's an acute combination of tragedy and comedy. Did you notice how similar tramedy sounds to traumatic?

Steph wouldn't give it up for the world.

 **Fin.**

 **So I really wanted to read something simple about a female Captain America without a complex love story between her, Bucky, Howard, or Tony that was really just about her getting through life and so I tried to write that story. Review please?**


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